How Class Balance Happens

[Bobby_McDonald]

The post :

 

1. Lists which specs are underperforming or overperforming with regards to DPS, HPS and DTPS.

2. Literally says that they're ignoring utility balance because it's too hard

3. Literally says their major targets are based on pure target dummy numbers, not considering AoE, TTK, target switching, DoTspread, etc.

 

People are pretty right about being pissed that some objectively overperforming classes won't be receiving utility/DCD nerfs and some underperforming ones won't receive buffs, based on the exact info Eric has give here.

 

Thanks. This is what I thought. I would have used some nicer words but I agree.

 

I am happy to get to know how BW wants to achieve balance.

 

I am sure it is a legit way to balance classes for PvE bossfights.

 

But bad classbalance nowadays is mostly a pvp-issue. And there is no dummy with 10k hp in PvP. There are classes fighting classes. So classes are competing against classes. To have a fair competition, those classes need to be balanced against eachother.

 

So I know now that if they dont change their view on how to achieve balance, we will always have OP classes.

 

None of the pvp veterans ever complained about the mercs dps being too high or venegance or annihilation doing not enough damage on a dummy. Whats making mercs overpowered atm has nothing to do with their dps output at all. Its also not about their dtps. Its about their utlities that make them survive 400k damage and more in a arena without a healer through off-gcd-selfheals.

 

This and their way to control enemies, which has always been there but used to be a trade-off for their rather bad survival, makes them unbalanced. If you want to balance him around a dummy fight, there wont be balance in PvP.

 

Same goes for engineer snipers. Their dps is fine. There are many threads about them being op in the PvP-Forums but no one complains about their dps. What people are unhappy about is the size of their plasma probe and the fact that they can spam it without any cooldown.

 

Also when it comes to complaints about PTs and Juggs (dps) in the PvP-Forums, it is mostly about their missing mobility as melees and espcially about their survivabilty.

 

And why? Because IN COMPARISON TO OTHER CLASSES they suffer from low survivabilty and mobility.

[EzioMessi]

"Lastly, you might also wonder why there are not more changes to utilities and survivability for damage dealers in 5.3, and that is a fair question. We are first focusing on the damage and healing output for all Classes before getting too carried away with utility changes. This is because opinions about where a given Discipline stands among the pack can be clouded by high or low damage or healing output without anyone even realizing it. That is not to say we won’t tweak a utility here or there, but before we go making massive changes to a class’s utility toolkit, we want to make sure the damage or healing they can put out is on target and relatively similar to other Disciplines in their grouping. Once we are happy with the damage output, we can start adjusting utilities to give those that need it a boost and others that are too powerful a reduction."

 

The main thing there is that the combat team actively made the decision to ignore utilities and DCDs for the very first balance patch they've had since they made Mercs OP.

 

If we KNEW that they are guaranteed give us regular balance patches, I would be fine, but regular balancing has been promised to use about 3 times since patch 1.0 and they have ]never delivered.

 

So to most players OP reads as "we're gonna tweak DPS and call it a day for 6 months". Which is just.... Not what we want. Hell even in the pure numbers department, they appear to be ignoring one of the poorest performing specs (such as Lightning Sorc).

 

I'd be really happy to be wrong here. But from the looks of it, Mercs aren't gonna be fixed until after Season 8 ends anyways, and by then we'll probably have another Flavour of the Season class.

[Lionflash]

So to most players OP reads as "we're gonna tweak DPS and call it a day for 6 months".

 

I hope not. I hope this is the first step. I hope the class-balance-dev is back from vacation, or is done visiting their father or wtv.

 

They can still nerf arsenal with just damage though (but not completely). I remember when arsenal had some set-up with dealing damage & heat signatures. Lower the damage, require more time to set up big damage and other classes just might be able to defeat them by the time the arsenal runs out of dcds. But i'm no game developer.

[EzioMessi]

I hope not. I hope this is the first step. I hope the class-balance-dev is back from vacation, or is done visiting their father or wtv.

 

They can still nerf arsenal with just damage though (but not completely). I remember when arsenal had some set-up with dealing damage & heat signatures. Lower the damage, require more time to set up big damage and other classes just might be able to defeat them by the time the arsenal runs out of dcds. But i'm no game developer.

 

Well, the Arsenal changes are up. I don't know enough to judge whether that will make a massive difference to PvP, but at the very least they have lost some of their damage potential. Hopefully it is enough...?

[Foambreaker]

Glad to see there is a method to the madness, look forward to the next set of changes.

[Lionflash]

Well, the Arsenal changes are up. I don't know enough to judge whether that will make a massive difference to PvP, but at the very least they have lost some of their damage potential.

 

Dam, just noticed.

 

The decoy nerf is an unexpected dcd nerf, not bad, I thought they might lose it completely, but seems fine.

 

Unload got nerfed all around (dmg, crit chance, crit surge, heat cost), and critical damage from their biggest hits are down.

 

Hopefully it is enough...?

 

Hopefully it's enough.

[VirtualAdepts]

I get it.... it is easier to nerf a class, than to bring the others on the same performance.

 

Honestly, people want to feel strong, they want to feel accomplished. DPS want to perform well, tanks want to negate everything, healers want to heal thru mechanics. Honestly, we all should be able to do this with all classes.

 

It is harder to increase health of the bosses, it is harder to boost the lower parsing/performing classes and it is harder to update your ideal table of dtps/DPS/eHPS/HPS to a new higher.

 

But, in my honest opinion, that is what people want. People want to bring 4 sorc DPS into a NiM Op. People want to bring what they want. Instead of nerfing for balance, just spent more time and boost them all, so they all have a chance.

 

You'll make people happy, you'll get less hate. The only downside is more tinkering on the development end to adjust this.

 

if the balance between PvP vs PvE isnt' fair... well adjust it by instance. WarZones can have different rules.

[Evolixe]

And so it continues:

 

Note: All changes below are currently in development and are subject to change before being released.

 

Mercenary

Arsenal

Blazing Bolts deals 4.89% less damage and costs 20 heat (up from 16)

Barrage no longer increases the damage dealt by Blazing Bolts, but still finishes its active cooldown

Riddle no longer improves Unload

The critical damage bonus provided by Target Tracking is now 15% (down from 30%)

Decoy now has 2 charges (down from 5)

 

Commando

Gunnery

Boltstorm deals 4.89% less damage and costs 20 energy cells (up from 16)

Curtain of Fire no longer increases the damage dealt by Boltstorm, but still finishes its active cooldown

Rotary Cannon no longer improves Full Auto

The critical damage bonus provided by Deadly Cannon is now 15% (down from 30%)

Decoy now has 2 charges (down from 5)

 

DevNotes: With the changes to Arsenal / Gunnery, we wanted to bring the Discipline down to its target DPS. We also wanted to make heat / energy cell management a little more challenging for the Arsenal / Gunnery player, so we slightly increased the cost of Blazing Bolts / Boltstorm while reducing the damage it deals.

 

Another goal we had for Arsenal / Gunnery was to tone down its burst damage potential a bit, so we reduced the critical damage bonus granted by Target Tracking / Deadly Cannon to shrink the size of those big Heatseeker Missile / Demolition Round and Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt critical hits.

 

Finally, we felt that Decoy needed a significant reduction in power, so we reduced the number of charges it provides from 5 down to 2.

 

 

How awefully predictable.

[Icykill_]

What a complete joke. They say they want feed back, they say they are listening.. but they just ignore what we say..

 

This is getting way past being a joke.. I guess unsubbing is all that's left

[Evolixe]

What a complete joke. They say they want feed back, they say they are listening.. but they just ignore what we say..

 

This is getting way past being a joke.. I guess unsubbing is all that's left

 

I'm starting to seriously doubt if Bioware even knows what feedback is to be honest.

 

At least when it comes to class balance. Which is just a complete circus act right now. And has been for forever.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Evolixe

[EzioMessi]

And so it continues:

 

 

 

 

How awefully predictable.

 

These changes are acceptable if and only if they do regular balance patches, not once-ever-six-month-lulz balancing.

 

Given their track record, I am not holding my breath, but I do hope I am wrong.

[Evolixe]

These changes are acceptable if and only if they do regular balance patches, not once-ever-six-month-lulz balancing.

 

Given their track record, I am not holding my breath, but I do hope I am wrong.

 

They are not acceptable because they don't adress ANY issue at hand. Literally.

Mercs PvE DPS was fine. PvP DPS was acceptably high. The problem is not the DPS.

 

It's the 500k Damage that they require to be killed. Nevermind the time you can't touch them because of reflects.

[Ramalina]

The problem people have with SWTOR's balance is that while this:

 

The target DPS, HPS, and DTPS values determine which content (Veteran Operations, Master Uprisings, etc.) players can successfully complete in a given set of gear.

 

is generally true for PvE,

 

this:

And in PvP situations, they determine the speed of player kill times and the ability for healers and tanks to extend the life of an ally under attack.

 

is almost never true for PvP.

 

In PvP the opportunity for a kill is ephemeral. I'm out of practice in the ground game compared to GSF, but from hazy memories I'd say a typical kill window is something like 5 seconds to 30 seconds at most. Sustained DPS and HPS can help influence how often kill windows occur, but are pretty much irrelevant in terms of actually producing or preventing kills.

 

What matters are burst damage, burst healing, damage reduction cooldowns, escapes (closing the kill window), gap closers (keeping the kill window open), and disables/snares/stuns.

 

As long as your balance criterial are set up for theoretical PvE performance and ignore the core mechanics that influence PvP in game performance, PvP balancing is all but impossible.

 

It's sort of implied in the outline, and I understand that you don't want to turn off paying customers, but the most honest response would have been along the lines of:

 

Sorry folks, but getting decent PvP balance in a game with mechanics similar to SWTOR's is really tricky. There's no guidebook or equation for getting it consistently right, the best you can hope for is using lots or trial and error to get as close as you can. Unfortunately we currently don't have enough people to put in the hours of work that that sort of trial and error approach would take. PvP has never really been a core focus of gameplay for SWTOR, and while we do hear your complaints (and those of us that PvP definitely sympathize), we can't really afford to do much more than try to keep PvE balance more or less in the ballpark as far as people who are skilled and geared not being a detriment to their Ops group no matter which class and spec they bring. If we have opportunities to rework things to make PvP balance a bit better, we'd love to do that, but it's a lot harder and more time consuming than it looks, so don't hold your breath.

 

 

For the passionate PvPers the bottom line is that in your balancing system you do not balance for PvP and that furthermore you do not intend sink a lot of resources into balance for PvP outside of or in addition to the PvE balancing system.

 

Not that I'm at all passionate about WZs and Arenas, but GSF is balanced with basically the same methodology and suffers from the same sort of resultant problems. I've done enough theorycrafting for GSF that I'm pretty sure that the PvE balancing methodology that you've used for all SWTOR content will continue to work reasonably well for PvE and continue to fail to work satisfactorily for all of the PvP content.

 

Have to say though, with the number of abilities and specializations in the ground game, I'm glad that trying to balance it isn't my job.

[Icykill_]

They are not acceptable because they don't adress ANY issue at hand. Literally.

Mercs PvE DPS was fine. PvP DPS was acceptably high. The problem is not the DPS.

 

It's the 500k Damage that they require to be killed. Nevermind the time you can't touch them because of reflects.

 

Exactly... dps hasn't been the issue at all.. it's the survivability that's the issue... how they can balance a class and not take those things into consideration is beyond me,.. even my 12 year old niece thinks it's idiotic

[Evolixe]

Exactly... dps hasn't been the issue at all.. it's the survivability that's the issue... how they can balance a class and not take those things into consideration is beyond me,.. even my 12 year old niece thinks it's idiotic

 

Whats even more funny is that after these changes Bioware is going to find out Mercs are still stupid OP for PvP and address that with utility changes afterall. The only problem is they already took away the damage which they didn't have to. So Mercs will once again be in a state where they do neither damage nor have defensive capacity.

 

Damage is a way of retaliation in itself. If forced upon the enemy team hard enough itll make them play less aggressively. Increasing survivability. Take that away, and you just end up in this dumb vicious circle.

[EzioMessi]

They are not acceptable because they don't adress ANY issue at hand. Literally.

Mercs PvE DPS was fine. PvP DPS was acceptably high. The problem is not the DPS.

 

It's the 500k Damage that they require to be killed. Nevermind the time you can't touch them because of reflects.

 

Well, they clearly did say that their DPS is above their target DPS, even if we may think it's fine.

 

Once again, I'd be fine with this patch if and only if they had the sense to balance PvP in LESS THAN SIX MONTHS LATER.

 

They don't. They have never done that.

 

They don't even consider TTK in their metrics apparently?

 

Or time spent CC'd.

 

It does explain a lot though, that's for sure.

[Evolixe]

Well, they clearly did say that their DPS is above their target DPS, even if we may think it's fine.

 

Then their target DPS is wrong. Plain and simple.

 

But this brings us back to the original problem. You can't just put classes in a school of "this is the DPS they should do" if they have such vastly different capabilities of dealing with everything else. Just because a Sniper is also a Ranged Burst class doesn't mean it should do the exact same damage as an Arsenal Merc.

 

The reason for that is because the Sniper has a vastly different approach in how it does damage. It is required to sit and hold still in one and the same spot to do optimal damage. It can do that on a dummy but it can't do that in PvP or a Bossfight. Stuff like this creates natural deviation.

 

It just doesn't work.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Evolixe

[mike_carton]

I get it.... it is easier to nerf a class, than to bring the others on the same performance...

People want to bring 4 sorc DPS into a NiM Op. People want to bring what they want. Instead of nerfing for balance, just spent more time and boost them all, so they all have a chance.

 

This is an important issue. Balancing through nerfing has many negative side effects.

[Severith]

Eric, Bioware's entire balancing process is flawed from the ground up.

 

Damage and healing numbers are easily adjusted. It's the abilities and utilities that are much more complicated.

 

Adjust then abilities and utilities......then adjust the damage and healing numbers to even out the class/spec.

 

Seems pretty simple my way, and a cluster***k your way.

[Ottoattack]

In fairness sake, the OP from BW noted that classes are not performing were they need to be dps wise. So, the whole argument that Arsenal is way ahead of lightning is kinda redundant. In addition, some of the utilities (looking at merc) will probably see some changes.

 

Things will be better in 5.3, but that does not change the fact that it will still remain as unbalanced. Nerfing arsenal merc damage will push them out of the meta in competitive PvP while still remain walking hover tanks in yolo que. The issues are the approach is a** backwards and BW want to do baby steps, as if class balance is in a decent position, which it absolutely is not. Class balance is not a 6 month exercise, particularly when you have 7 month worth of data.

[Evolixe]

This is an important issue. Balancing through nerfing has many negative side effects.

 

We also can't get everyone to Lethality Operative DPS levels with Merc Survivability.

That's not balance, that's total chaos.

 

Class Balance just can't be simplified into a few lines of text. It can't.. You have to see the game as a whole, what will have impact where.. and how does that change the playing field for everyone else.

 

If you just go by a static you get what we've had for the longest time now. No Class Balance will ever exist.

[Evolixe]

In fairness sake, the OP from BW noted that classes are not performing were they need to be dps wise. So, the whole argument that Arsenal is way ahead of lightning is kinda redundant. In addition, some of the utilities (looking at merc) will probably see some changes.

 

Things will be better in 5.3, but that does not change the fact that it will still remain as unbalanced. Nerfing arsenal merc damage will push them out of the meta in competitive PvP while still remain walking hover tanks in yolo que. The issues are the approach is a** backwards and BW want to do baby steps, as if class balance is in a decent position, which it absolutely is not. Class balance is not a 6 month exercise, particularly when you have 7 month worth of data.

 

They nerf damage now, utilities later. Then suddenly Mercs don't have damage nor survivability.

Can you see the problem now?

 

I mean I can DIRECTLY relate to that from the past.

 

 

The damage they have now could aid them with lesser survivability. If they get forced to play more defensively every now and again that will naturally make Mercs do less damage. I mean how much more clear do you want it to get?

[mike_carton]

Discussion Topic: Class Changes This Summer

 

Class Changes: Hatred Assassin / Serenity Shadow

Class Changes: Arsenal Merc / Gunnery Commando

[yellow_]

aaaaaand our worst fears have been realized

 

looking forward to another 6 months of domination in PVP by mercenaries

 

next up: snipers keep defensive safeguards to secure 6 months of almost-as-dominant-as-mercs status

Edited June 16, 2017 by yellow_

[Icykill_]

They nerf damage now, utilities later. Then suddenly Mercs don't have damage nor survivability.

Can you see the problem now?

 

I mean I can DIRECTLY relate to that from the past.

 

The damage they have now could aid them with lesser survivability. If they get forced to play more defensively every now and again that will naturally make Mercs do less damage. I mean how much more clear do you want it to get?

 

Exactly. And for those of us who've been here since launch, this is exactly what is going to happen ^^^

 

We've seen it all before.. and now we know how they actually balance, it makes sense why they are so bad at it.

 

They will destroy Merc dps.. people will still complain about Mercs being OP.. eventually they'll nerf defences, but it will be too late by then because Merc dps will be rubbish after continuous dps nerfs

 

They did something similar to Lightning Sorcs back in 3.x and the class has never recovered. It's actually gotten worse with every expansion or balance change and now Lightning is the worst performing spec in the game.

 

Mark my words, this is exactly how it starts and in 6 months Mercs will be worthless trash.